What Are Survival Crafting Games? The Genre's Features and History from Minecraft to Valheim
The definition and appeal of survival crafting games, where you start empty-handed and hold out by gathering resources and making tools, plus subcategories such as sandbox, multiplayer, and story-driven, and a history running from UnReal World to Minecraft, DayZ, and Palworld.
You wake up in the middle of an unfamiliar island or forest. You have almost nothing, and before the sun sets you need to chop wood to make an axe, start a fire, and build somewhere to hide. Your hunger bar keeps dropping, and when night falls, something comes closer. This is the typical first day in a survival crafting game.
The genre grew rapidly after Minecraft was released in 2009, and in the 2010s so many games came out that they filled Steam's Early Access listings. Today it ranges widely, from games you play quietly on your own to games where dozens of people compete on a single server.
In this post, we cover the definition and core appeal of survival crafting games, their subcategories, landmark titles throughout history, design features, who they suit, and where the genre is today.
Definition and Core Appeal
English Wikipedia describes survival games as a subgenre of action games set in a hostile, intense open world. Players start with minimal equipment and must survive as long as possible by finding resources to manage hunger, thirst, illness, and mental state. Many games use randomly or procedurally generated worlds and have an open structure without set goals.
Crafting is the heart of the genre. Wikipedia identifies the core as a loop in which you combine two or more resources to make a new item, use that item to obtain better resources, and then make even better tools. A wooden pickaxe can mine stone but not metal ore, so you have to make a stone pickaxe before you can mine ore.
The fun of survival crafting games comes from the following.
- The sense of growth from building something out of nothing: Starting empty-handed, you can clearly see yourself acquiring tools, a house, a fortress, and even machines one step at a time.
- Goals you set yourself: Since there are almost no win conditions, you set your own goals, like "Let's build a bridge today" or "Let's see what's beyond that mountain."
- Alternating tension and security: Danger and rest take turns, with exploring and gathering by day and defending by night.
- Stories made together: Building houses and getting through crises with friends in the same world becomes a memorable story in itself.
Subcategories
| Subcategory | Characteristics | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Sandbox survival | Freely reshape blocks and terrain, with a strong emphasis on building and creativity | Minecraft, Terraria |
| Hardcore survival | Strict management of body temperature, hunger, and injuries; sometimes you start over when you die | UnReal World, The Long Dark |
| Multiplayer PvP survival | Competing with other players for resources and territory on one server | DayZ, Rust |
| Co-op (PvE) survival | Taking on the environment and monsters together with friends | Valheim, Don't Starve Together |
| Story and exploration survival | Survival with a plot and a destination | Subnautica |
| Survival + other genres | Combined with monster collecting, dinosaur taming, and more | Palworld, ARK: Survival Evolved |
Survival elements have also spread widely into other genres. Wikipedia cites 2013's Tomb Raider and the Far Cry series as examples that adopted survival rules such as gathering, hunting, and crafting. Battle royales, where players fight until only one is left, are also close relatives of survival games. "Survival horror," where you hold out in a frightening atmosphere, has a similar name, but survival horror often follows a set story and set locations, so it has a different feel from survival games where you hold out in an open world.
Landmark Titles Through History
| Year | Game | Developer | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | UnReal World | Sami Maaranen | The harsh nature of Iron Age Finland, where surviving as long as possible is the only goal |
| 1999 | Survival Kids | Konami | Desert-island survival on the Game Boy Color, with multiple ways to progress |
| 2009 | Minecraft | Mojang (Markus Persson) | Gathering, crafting, and night defense in a block world; popularized the genre |
| 2011 | Terraria | Re-Logic | 2D side-scrolling sandbox with bosses and gear progression |
| 2012 | DayZ (ARMA 2 mod) | Dean Hall (later Bohemia Interactive) | Tension with other players amid a zombie apocalypse |
| 2013 | Don't Starve | Klei Entertainment | Hunger and sanity meters, quirky art style |
| 2013 | Rust | Facepunch Studios | PvP survival that started in Early Access, fully released in 2018 |
| 2014 | Subnautica | Unknown Worlds | Exploring an alien ocean planet, fully released in 2018 after Early Access |
| 2017 | The Long Dark | Hinterland | Lonely survival in the Canadian snowfields after a geomagnetic storm |
| 2021 | Valheim | Iron Gate Studio | Co-op survival set in Norse mythology, 5 million copies within a month of Early Access |
| 2024 | Palworld | Pocketpair | Survival game mixing monster collecting and base building |
According to Wikipedia, survival elements themselves existed as far back as Pong and Space Invaders, but the survival game genre as we know it took shape in the 1990s and became distinct in the early 21st century. The MMORPG Wurm Online, in which you reshape the land and construct buildings to grow your own kingdom, also influenced many survival games, and Markus Persson, who took part in its early development, is the very person who created Minecraft. Many people regard Minecraft as the game that popularized the survival game genre.
Sales records also show the scale of the genre. According to Wikipedia, Minecraft has sold over 400 million copies, making it the best-selling video game of all time, and Terraria had sold over 70 million copies as of 2026. The standalone version of DayZ sold more than 172,500 copies in the first 24 hours of its alpha release, generating over $5 million in revenue. Market research firm SuperData estimated survival game revenue in the first half of 2017 at over $400 million.
Design Features
- Survival stats: Besides health, there are meters such as hunger, thirst, body temperature, and sanity. Don't Starve has separate hunger and sanity meters, and the character dies if either one runs out.
- Crafting trees (tech trees): The steps from materials to tools to better materials form the backbone of progression. Some games don't tell you the recipes and make you figure them out through experimentation or guides.
- Durability: Tools and weapons wear out with use, giving you a reason to keep gathering resources.
- The weight of death: Some games let you return to where you died to recover lost items, while others choose permadeath, where a single death means starting over.
- Open worlds and random generation: Different terrain each time keeps exploration fresh. Devices that subtly hint at nearby resources through sound and visuals are also common.
- Resource regeneration: In many games, resources do not regrow on their own. Games like Terraria make management fun by having trees disappear when you chop them down but letting you plant seeds to grow them again.
- Multiplayer servers: Persistent server worlds are divided into PvE, where players cooperate, and PvP, where they fight each other. Stories of forming alliances and building fortresses emerge naturally.
Who These Games Are For
- People who love building and making things, like with LEGO
- People who want free-form play where they set their own goals rather than following a fixed storyline
- People looking for a co-op game to play with friends for a long time
- People who enjoy the tension of planning and preparation getting them through a crisis
On the other hand, if you want a game that ends in a short time, or one with clear goals and an ending, it may feel overwhelming at first. In that case, a survival game with a story and a destination, like Subnautica, makes a good starting point.
Survival Crafting Games Today
Wikipedia notes that since survival games began pouring out in 2012 after the success of Minecraft and DayZ, some have pointed out that the market became saturated with similar post-apocalyptic settings, clones of hit games, and games trying to make money quickly through Early Access. Even so, games that showed new combinations, like Valheim and Palworld, achieved great success in a short time. Palworld sold 8 million copies in six days after its Early Access release in January 2024.
Today, survival crafting is both a genre in its own right and a "bundle of rules" that goes into many kinds of games. The loop of gathering, making, and defending can be attached to RPGs, action games, and monster-collecting games alike. When choosing a new survival game, decide first whether you'll play alone or together, and whether you want PvP against other players. That makes the choice much easier.